itch.io

Okay, I've slept on that last post I made yesterday, and I looked at the code. In the update 28 script, the title is set to "Lord" by default, and you have a key that stores whether or not the title has been set by the player. And when you TF Marazet, it checks that key, and if it's false, it calls up the title select. The issue I see is that you need to trigger that manually for every single tf that uses a title, instead of making it happen automatically, which is why it doesn't happen for Matthias. Which is very error prone if you forget to put that in anywhere it needs it.

I don't know Python or Ren'Py well enough to know if what I suggest is possible (I'm more familliar with Godot), but maybe instead you could set the default title to something that would never be used by anyone, like "Xanthorple" (A reference to a mass transformation FIM fic called Nightmare on Two Feet), and code it so that if the game tries to ever actually use that specific title, it'll instead pull up the title selection screen and try again. As in, the use of that value for that string in dialogue will automatically call up the function without needing to set a check beforehand.

I just looked at the code again and it's even weirder than I thought. If while during the Marazet Harem TF, Lewis forces acceptance, the game checks if his title is "Lord", and if so, brings up the title selection. But if the acceptance happens gradually, the game instead checks whether or not the title was manually set, and if not, it calls up the title selection. The former will happen even if the title is manually set, as long as it's set to "Lord".

I've gotta say that I like the game! There's not a lot there at the moment, but you've got a solid base. That being said, I feel like the Steam players are kinda getting left out. It's better for both getting more attention, and for transparency if you also post update reports on steam, Updates get put into player feeds, which gets attention, which increases you game's publicity. I think people on steam get the impression that you've abandoned the game, especially since it's early access and there's a disclaimer on the store page saying it hasn't been updated in a year. You'd be surprised how much value there is in posting regular progress reports where people can see them.

By the way, the itch io progress report posts have dead links.

Anyway, as for the game itself, it seems to be early in development, so who knows what's going to come, but I for one would like an expansion of dialogue and character interaction based stuff.

Ah, what I meant was that I was wondering if the player can get additional uses of the mirror pool via making others loyal to Lewis and willing to give their uses to him, since the reverse is true.

And that's a shame. For me part of the appeal is having it be a more subtle backstory change that keeps their identity intact. And while I do like outright tf stuff, if it's cruel, objectifies a character in certain ways (I'm vague because I genuinely won't know until I see it, but usually anything involving intelligence loss, making a character lose what they hold dear to them, or similar), or messed up somehow, it instead leaves me feeling kinda sick instead. So I liked the original Harem Mag because it gave the perks, so to speak, of a harem transformation in a way that felt like hypno content, which I tend to really like (if not evil, so not dracodom Lewis), and I liked peasant Mag because she's sweet, she seems to be treated kindly by Lewis, and Mag is awful enough that it didn't feel evil to my sensibilities (though the implication that Lewis gave her self esteem issues does make it the tiniest bit off to me, but maybe I'm misreading that). The Sugar Baby Mag though is a big no to me because sluttification and also corruption. Enigma Mag I'm completely ambivalent about, it's just kinda odd to me. Author Mag is nice and I'd really like it... if it was done in a way where it was, like, her soul and sense of self growing instead of getting replaced.

 But harem Marazet feels bad in general to me no matter what, and I know I'd have a better time with it if there was a less oppressive option that still turned her into a willing sub without stealing her sense of self or her most important values.

Oh, that reminds me! I think I just remembered another part of that post from December. I think it's that Kind Hydra Matthias doesn't ask your preferred title like Harem Marazet does, and instead defaults to Lord despite using the same string. I just tested it and that's still the case.

I think I remember another part of that old post. It was about the wishing pool. Since Mat can make Lewis use the wishing pool for his own sake, does that mean that at some point we can get additional uses of it, or even unique effects by telling others what to do?

Another thing is the Harem transformations. I already mentioned that the removal of normal Harem Mag was kinda a bummer to me since while I liked the whole getting Mag as a loyal follower via backstory invasion, I'm not a big fan of essentially replacing characters completely... unless they're, like, awful and deserve it I guess. So is that how all harem options are going to be?

No, it wasn't a question, it was like 4 paragraphs of feedback. I don't remember it too well. It's been 7 months. Some of it I think was bug reports that are now outdated, like I think there was a bug where talking to Mag got you free actions. But there definitely were things I said that I wish I had saved (you can't see your own pending posts unless you saved the link for it, which I didn't realize until it was too late). The only other part of it I remember was the silhouette thing. Namely that the harem transformation screen felt a bit hard to use because of how it's all silhouetted. Like, if the silhouettes went away once you've seen a transformation before, that'd be fine, but otherwise it's hard to keep track of what's what when you have like 7 black images with no context of what change you're even trying to apply there.

Glad to share information! And I see that approved posts appear on top instead of at their actual original posting date. Interesting. Also, I got a notification for my 2 months ago post, but not the one I left in I think December of last year.

I find it a shame that the Magnificence Harem update removed the original personality option. The one where she has herself declaring devotion to Lewis inserted into her backstory, but not really anything else. I really liked the idea of backstory changes that got the characters's loyalty and devotion but kept the gist of them intact. At most blunting out their rougher edges. I prefer to avoid the soul death changes.

Okay, I seem to be able to leave posts again, which is good, but my pending posts are still pending. Do I need to contact the game devs themselves to approve my comments on their games?

So I just learned that apparently when your posts are put on pending, the game creator is the one that can approve them, but they aren't actually notified about this. The reason I bring this up is because I have two posts put on pending for this game, one from about 6 to 8 months ago (like over 190 days ago but I don't want to do the math) and one from 2 months ago. They were feedback on a few things, though I don't actually remember the contents of them that well aside from something about how I wish the harem transformations lost the silhouettes after you see them at least once. I think you can see and approve them via Dashboard - Edit a Project - More - Edit Comments - Pending Posts. Obviously the one from over half a year ago is probably out of date on a few things, like a bug report or two, but it was a really long comment. Long enough that I think some of it is still relevant.

It's a shame this game's gone dormant with complete silence from the dev. It's not like there aren't other options. GOG, for one, allows adult games.

Not really a point to that, though. The game's updates aren't done with save compatibility in mind. They're always adding additional stuff in the code for previous things, so transferring saves tends to break things. And a single session of the game is really short anyway.

I'm emailing support for the third time, since my pending posts still haven't been approved even after the better part of a year. Request (381657). I really hope this actually does something this time, because this is really disheartening. How are you supposed to communicate with devs if you can't leave posts?

It's been almost half a year since I had my posts put on pending. I emailed support about the issue not to long after that. Yet still those posts are pending. So I emailed support again about the issue five days ago, and still if I try to leave a post it gets put on pending.

The recent support email is request 366917. I can't leave feedback on games if I can't leave posts, so I really hope that this time whatever is happening will be fixed.

I emailed support over a week ago, and got "Your request (332610) has been received and is being reviewed by our support staff." But still nothing. Kinda makes me wonder how many people work on this site if issues like that can go unaddressed for... I think it's been like a month and a half since the issues started.

Considering the whole situation with Itch and Steam, I thought I'd point out something. GOG seems pretty supportive of adult games. They're talking about how their games are DRM free and owned forever, they were pushing back against the situation, and I saw that for two days they were offering NSFW games for free, including the very popular Sapphire Safari. It could be that they're just using the situation for PR, but I see that they actually have a lot of NSFW games on their store. And I think they allow Early Access.

Considering the whole situation with Itch and Steam, I thought I'd point out something. GOG seems pretty supportive of adult games. They're talking about how their games are DRM free and owned forever, they were pushing back against the situation, and I saw that for two days they were offering NSFW games for free, including the very popular Sapphire Safari. It could be that they're just using the situation for PR, but I see that they actually have a lot of NSFW games on their store. Maybe it won't matter as much to this game, since it's not complete or early access like GOG allows, instead having a free version and a patreon exclusive paid version, but I thought it should be known that GOG is an option.

Considering the whole situation with Itch and Steam, I thought I'd point out something. GOG seems pretty supportive of adult games. They're talking about how their games are DRM free and owned forever, they were pushing back against the situation, and I saw that for two days they were offering NSFW games for free, including the very popular Sapphire Safari. It could be that they're just using the situation for PR, but I see that they actually have a lot of NSFW games on their store. Maybe it won't matter as much to this game, since it's not complete or early access like GOG allows, instead having a free version and a patreon exclusive paid version, but I thought it should be known that GOG is an option. (Though Steam is not as much a risk as itch io, since I only know of a single game that got removed from Steam because it was in an article)

actually, I got a better idea. instead of:

$ ree_hypno_sub += 1

        if ree_at != "Engaged" and ree_at != "Friendly" or ree_at != "Friendly" and ree_at != "Engaged":

            $ ree_at = "Trusted"

I'll change it to:

if ree_at == "Engaged" or ree_at == "Friendly" :

    $ ree_hypno_sub += 1

else:

    $ ree_at = "Trusted"

    $ ree_hypno_sub += 1

This is much cleaner. Though I learned something about python trying this. Apparently indentation matters in python just like it does in GDscript. So don't just copy paste what I typed out verbatim if you decide to use that. I miss the programming languages where I didn't have to pay attention to that... constantly mixing tab and spacebar.

Maybe you should be able to enter the dragoncourt if you have a Harem TF magnificence? I notice you can only get in if Lewis is a spy, Lewis is a trophy,  or if Lewis is both a Draconoclast and it's mingle phase 5 specifically. (why the mingle phase restriction? It's the same for a poodalist Lewis before mingle 5.)

The new guide is kinda unclear sometimes. It says that maincoone Rhianna requires the romantic advice talk with her, but what it doesn't say is that you need to tell her yes when she asks if you'll become a poodalist to actually unlock. I said no and was confused when it wouldn't let me tf her.

Also, maybe you should have a section in the guide for missable things and also maybe a section for sex scenes? The Rhianna one, for instance, is there if you do the love at first sight tf, but I dunno if that's the only way to have it. 

If it is, maybe you could implement another way to get the "Charmed" attitude than that limited time TF, maybe something like offering a similar TF if you've flirted with her, or maybe if you've gotten to the romantic advice talk?

If you do decide to make "Friendly" persist with the alliance TG scene, replacing the old

        if ree_at != "Engaged":

with

        if ree_at != "Engaged" and ree_at != "Friendly" or ree_at != "Friendly" and ree_at != "Engaged":

seems to have worked. Don't know python so maybe there's a better way, but I tested it by discussing alliance and TG'ing him at both "Friendly" and "Wary". "Friendly" stayed, but "Wary" became "Trusted" with my code.

So I posted about this line under ree_discuss_hypnosis, where you try to discuss hypnosis with Reese, and how it seems to be bugged, since "Trusted" should probably be "Skeptical":

if ree_at == "Trusted" or lew_trophy or lew_spy or lew_court == 2 or lew_maid: 

But I also kinda want to know your reasonings for the other ones. "Skeptical" should probably be enough for Reese to say no, right? "Skeptical" will be applied if lewis is a spy, trophy, or high power maid, so trophy and spy probably shouldn't be on that list.

Specifically, why stop a lewis that's a low power maid, and why completely block a poodalist Lewis?

Also, remember my post about one attitude possibly overwriting another? Well, it happens, and it seems to break your no reverting TF's rule. You know how if Reese is marked when you do small talk 1 with him, you can make him open up with 1 influence? Well, that makes his attitude "Friendly". But, the way you set it up, "Wary" is his default attitude, and "Engaged" is his attitude for being engaged to him in the Koi path, and maybe some other one that's not specifically in the main scripts file (too lazy to check every single update right now). Meanwhile, "Friendly", "Trusted", and "Skeptical" are attitudes based on how much he likes the player. He gets "Skeptical" if Lewis is transformed into some other personalty before smalltalk 1 (spy, trophy, or highpower maid). "Trusted" is if you ally with Reese and then turn him into a woman. 

The thing is, I'm seeing a weird thing with the shortstack transformation in particular. If you make Reese small without a prior relationship, he'll obviously get mad, and his relationship will become "Skeptical". Yet I see that if any of the following are true:

if ree_at == "Trusted" or ree_at == "Friendly" or ree_hypno_dom >= 2 or lew_koi == True:

then he has alternate dialogue, and if you know hypnosis and aren't a koi, the game will allow you to spend influence to make him accept the changes. But if you don't hypnotize him, his attitude will become "Skeptical" if it was "Trusted", and "Trusted" if it was friendly. This seems a bit harsh. I feel like this shouldn't be the case. But even if you feel that it should be this way, this seems to imply that "Friendly" is a higher tier than "Trusted".

The problem is that TG'ing Reese while alliance_unused == false ensures that Reese's attitude will become "Trusted" if not at "Engaged". Even if the attitude is "Friendly", it will still become "Trusted", despite "Friendly" seemingly being better than "Trusted".

Yeah, it's confirmed. If you discuss alliance with Reese before you TG him, it'll put her attitude at "Trusted" once you TG him.

Nevermind, I mean "Skeptical", not "Wary"

He has several possible attitudes. "Wary", "Skeptical", "Trusted", "Friendly", and "Engaged".

Though you can fix it yourself by going into the script and looking for the code I just posted, and replacing "Trusted" with "Skeptical"

Actually, looking more into things, it seems like the skeptical attitude would be more fitting, since the wary attitude is his default one.

I looked into the game files, and it's really strange, but for some reason the "ree_discuss_hypnosis" dialogue will give an unfavorable response if any of the following are true: if ree_at == "Trusted" or lew_trophy or lew_spy or lew_court == 2 or lew_maid

I'm pretty sure this is a bug. Because Reese having that response if his relationship with Lewis is "Trusted" makes no sense. He has another attitude called "Wary", and were that the one listed, that would make much more sense for that to be his response.

I looked into the game files, and it's really strange, but for some reason the "ree_discuss_hypnosis" dialogue will give that response if any of the following are true: if ree_at == "Trusted" or lew_trophy or lew_spy or lew_court == 2 or lew_maid

I'm pretty sure this is a bug. Because Reese having that response if his relationship with Lewis is "Trusted" makes no sense. He has another attitude called "Wary", and were that the one listed, that would make much more sense for that to be his response.

Gonna post this up top to get the dev's attention.

Basically with 2 I was thinking of how the bugs I see with this game tend to be typos, or maybe even copy/pasting code and forgetting to change a word to fit the required thing. The status menu disappearing bug is something I've seen multiple times across different versions, and I was just thinking to myself that if you have a function or script to automate things like that you would only need to write new code instead of repeating the same lines over and over. I remember once hearing that the game Earthbound is a mess to romhack because all the dialogue text has to include variables to make it work, like always needing to specify the speed for instance. That for me is like as if I had to write directly in html code when writing stories instead of just hitting ctrl + I or B or whatever in Libre Office for text styling. Though, not knowing Python, for all I know you might be unable to implement such systems because of engine limitations.

As for 3, if you have plans that need the attitude system then I get it. I just thought the perk system was easier to use, easier to keep track of, and was more flexible. And I liked how perks have text accompanying them to give both flavor and information. I love flavor and information. I always read lorebooks and monster lists in RPGs, and I will always prefer transparency in games (unless mystery is the point of the excercise). For instance, the game Risk of Rain 2 has vague tooltips when you pick up a new item, so years ago I made a text mod for my own use that replaces the old tooltips with ones that say exactly what each item does when you pick it up (like giving the exact stats for gasoline's burn radius and damage instead of just saying that if you kill an enemy, ones near it burst into flames).

I decided to go into the game files, intending to fix the bugs I saw that I posted about earlier since I'm kinda impatient and genuinely wanted to see if I was capable of solving the problem. I don't actually know python since I'm more familiar with Godot, but I figured that just knowing programming meant I could figure out what was what. I actually managed to seemingly fix them. I did so by removing the "pc_time -= 1" at the end of Rhianna's TF menu in scripts, turning "hide" to "show" in two lines for Magnificence's gender preference TF in the update 25 scripts, and replacing the erroneous "rhi_smalltalk" with "mar_smalltalk" in the screens script. 

By the way, the last one is kinda weird. It says "protected through mingle phase" followed by the level of smalltalks had. I think that one, the fact that only specifically smalltalks can have protection rather than any talking that isn't leaving the talk menu is kind of a bummer, I thought it'd be like action points in reverse where instead of losing an action when you go into a menu and getting it back if you select nothing, you'd gain a protection point by going into the talk menu and lose one if you select nothing. Two, the protection says it's through mingle phase X rather than it being "protected for [protection points} mingle phases", and having a line at the end of each mingle phase like "if [protection points] >=1,  [protection points] -= 1"

This kinda leads me to my suggestions on coding in general. Please don't take this an insult, but I feel you could improve your code, and these were some of my ideas of how I personally would've accomplished it.

1- File Structure. The fact that you have all the things kinda strewn about in a bunch of places makes it hard to find things. It made me kinda wish once again that I had downloaded the version 0.24 walkthrough since I then could've looked at the patch notes to see what was added when. But having only one file leads to a situation like how Undertale had every single line of dialogue in one place. I would've formatted things so that the scripts was a master file, and then there were separate files for each character for the purposes of one on one dialogue and TF, and then a file for perks, and so on. And I personally love organizing things, so I would've had not just an events file, but several, like, "[location] events" for each location, "questline events", "challenges", etc.

2. Making mechanics actually mechanics. It's harder at first but saves your bacon in the long run to have a system in place instead of having to add things every single time and constantly having to remember what you already did. If you don't know what I mean by that, I remember reading a devlog from another game where the dev was like "Okay, I've gone half insane trying to program each individual character's abilities and keeping it working, so I've scrapped every single bit of that old code and am now going to implement an event system. Each ability will cause an event, and the events will have variables that I can change based on the ability. That way, instead of having to program an attack from scratch each time, I can just easily make the attack call a deal damage event and set said attack's damage variable."

3. I see that you have both an attitude system and a perks system. I think perks are cool. But attitudes aren't added to a character like perks are. (or rather, on and off since you programmed perks to be true and false for each character unlike, say, Pokemon, where there's a master list of moves and moves are attached to a Pokemon when they learn said move) I foresee one attitude replacing another, causing a bug because the old one was needed for something but now that it's been replaced now the gameflow is borked. Personally, I would've rolled it all into perks. Like how Marazet gains the "trusting" attitude when you've talked to her twice. I would instead have a perk like: "Trusts Lewis: Reconnected with Lewis and now trusts him." and even add to that: "Will be more receptive to Lewis's propositions." to make it clear that she's now willing to partner up with him for the second challenge. In fact, I think it would be cool if, say, that meant Marazet would sabotage someone else other than Lewis if Marazet got turned into a spy.

I guess that last suggestion would need to have the system for dialogue when you select someone to talk to reworked though, But I think it'd be worth it, both to make the game more transparent to players that aren't reading the walkthrough through perk text, and for the reasons listed above.

By the way, I noticed that Tessa has an attitude called "Lovestruck". Is that achievable, or is it not really implemented into the game yet?

Two bugs: swapping Magnificence's preference makes the status menu disappear, and the status menu display for Marazet being protected seems to be based on if you small-talked to Rhianna, not Marazet

Okay, with further testing, it seems that just entering the transformation menu for Rhianna takes an action, because selecting "nothing" will cause you to lose 1 action, instead of 2.

Rhianna transformations seem to cost 2 actions. Tested on a new game with each of the four available, causing 5 to go to 3 if you ignore the Akarion and Rhianna scene, and 4 to 2 if you interject. Doing a second transformation still has the same effect, and this double reduction still applies even on other rounds (tested by not talking to Rhianna or even going to areas she's at until round 2. By the way, you can wait to do the Love at First Sight thing by doing exactly that, if anyone else wanted to know that.)

Thank you for letting me know! Anyway, missing citations is, in my opinion, a problem for the book, since that tends to imply that its accuracy is dubious, like that one guy who was using wikipedia to write books on Norse legends and vikings, but I'll check it out anyway, since I can verify with other sources. It just drives me nuts when I see things like Arcturus Publishing collections and they don't even have a freaking author listed. I don't like the idea of accurate traditional folklore being replaced by pop culture depictions, which is why I hate D&D with a passion. (Kobolds are an example. It's literally just a German word for goblin, but now the internet only gives me anthropomorphic lizards.) Or how despite how much I like Tolkien's books it irks me how influential he was, like, he based Smaug off of the shapeshifting dwarf Fafnir from Norse legend, and now that's the standard depiction of dragons despite earlier dragons being depicted as crocodile-dog-rat hybrids that were tiny and just animals, vermin even (look up old paintings of Saint George killing the dragon if you don't know what I'm talking about). That's mostly just a me thing, though, so don't let my personal gripes affect your enjoyment of anything.

Sorry if this is a weird question, but what's your bibliography for sources of mythology and folklore? Kinda want to learn for myself about these things. Whether it be articles or books, I enjoy collecting and reading such things. I apologize if this isn't really something that you remember though, or if there isn't really any book sources and I'm just bothering you. (On a side note, Atlus has a garbage bibliography for SMT. They used books like The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets by Barbara G. Walker, which is barely researched New Age nonsense made to appeal to the radical feminist crowd by manipulating them with words like "patriarchy", and Angels, An Endangered Species by Malcolm Godwin, which has no research citations at all, and instead of being manipulative scammy New Age nonsense is instead insane conspiracy New Age Nonsense which makes claims like the Metatron secretly being Satan and impersonating God in the book of Exodus and such, very annoying. Unfortunately Atlus took these books and those like them as fact because they got popular in Japan, which is why there's weird stuff like Baldr being related to Baal, Shakespeare's Queen Mab being mixed with Medb, all the crazy violent tyrannical robot angels, and so on.)

I see you made a new walkthrough! Though, it being spoiler free does make it seem a bit less comprehensive than the old one, even if it's more up to date. Things like integration, elaboration on mechanics, and those neat images are gone. Do you plan on making two different walkthroughs, or is this the style going forward? (kinda wish I downloaded the last walkthrough, I only got the one for V0.22)

On a side note, I really miss the old school manuals that used to be included with games up until the gamecube era. They tended to look nice, have details and lore that wasn't elaborated upon in the game itself, and honestly were helpful in actually buying games, considering the shop I used to buy from let you check out the manual to see what the game itself was like.

I noticed in the patch notes that a pregnant Rhianna requires a poodalist. Could interspecies (I mean, ignoring the fact that while dogs are only different races [unlike humans, funnily enough. human "races" were made up by idiots centuries ago and are unscientific unlike the different dog breeds, which are actually different races], different types of cats are entirely different species, much less the whole dragon=snake thing) biological compatibility be a future transformation? Perhaps a worldwide one? I feel like removing such barriers that divide these peoples would also be a point in favor of the peace element to the competition.

Dunno why, but the status menu disappears after the Marazet and Tessa interaction.

You know, reading all the past comments, it seems like every other day someone is having an issue because they're trying to play on mobile, or they're asking a question about the game being on mobile. Maybe you should have a disclaimer somewhere in your banner, something like: THIS GAME IS NOT CURRENTLY COMPATIBLE WITH MOBILE, DO NOT EXPECT A PLAY SESSION ON A MOBILE DEVICE TO BE FUNCTIONAL.

Also, are you going to add more music? Something like, having different songs as the story or challenges progress? I know the two songs in the game are from a music pack, but I gotta say, listening to the same two songs during my testing of the game seems to have caused them to invade my nightmares. Kinda weird.